Credibility is the most sought after aspect in the business world today, sometimes even ahead of profitability! Since time immemorial, businesses have faced the trade-off between short-term profiteering and long term profitability that is sustained by trust and good business practices.
Credibility is no short-term pursuit. It takes years, often decades to establish credibility in the market. In the age of social media, it has become easier to communicate a venture’s credibility, but making your business credible in the first place is the biggest hurdle. Once built, it is the largest asset you will ever build and account for. In fact, many SMEs have serviced their niche markets with such dedication and focused so intensely on building trust and relationship, that they are enjoying its fruits in the present day.
The Bitter Pill: Credibility Challenges in Indian Pharmaceutical Sector
It is no secret that pharmaceutical industry is the sunshine sector of Indian exports. Led by the country’s giants such as Cipla, Lupin, Sun Pharma and Cadila, generic drugs constitute the largest pie[1] of Indian pharma’s $20 bn export market, followed by OTC medicines and patented drugs respectively. With over 200[2] pharma companies and thousands of contractual manufacturing units (dominated by SMEs) in the country, the domestic market too was pegged at a whopping $26 bn[2] in 2014.
However, in recent times there has been a slide in the credibility of the industry. In 2015 alone, 12[3] Indian pharma manufacturing sites received import alerts from the US FDA. The latest warning against an Indian pharma site was issued as recently as December, 2016[3]. With the increase in consumer awareness, questions have started to loom in the minds of many on the existing practices and transparency commitments of the players in this space. The government has made attempts to resolve the credibility issues for all the companies in the space. As a part of the attempt standard norms and regulations pertaining to the industry in general have been created and implemented to reduce the discrepancies and gaps especially for small businesses.
There are a few key concerns baffling us Let us explore and see how can these be addressed?.
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Tests and Clinical Trials
Perhaps one of the biggest concerns in the pharma space since our independence has been the establishment of transparency in conducting clinical trials for drugs. The entire spectrum of the clinical trial process is under the scanner due to lack of legislative framework making it mandatory to present clinical trial methodology, data, and findings for review if (and when) demanded by concerned authorities. It is not just transparency of information – often, deep pocket pharma giants make it through the tunnel while smaller businesses, no matter how genuine, struggle to meet the costs of such trial, and end up remaining as pure-play suppliers / contract manufacturers.
The situation can be controlled if not completely resolved with the implementation of various regulations and guidelines and creation of a strong legislative framework as well as encouraging companies to patent their formulations.
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Price-Discrimination
According to a recent study, drugs form the largest component of expenditure in the total Out Of Pocket (OOP) spend on healthcare[4]. The gaping disparity between prices of branded drugs as against generic drugs with the same formulation have cast dark shadows on the price-discrimination pursued by the industry as a whole. Coupled with this is the fact that many Indians are lured to buy the costlier branded drugs largely by physicians who are often paid large incentives to promote them.
A lot of measures have been taken to curb this issue, starting from creation of website to help people find the generic names for their expensive medicines as well as opening of ‘Jan Aushadhi Stores’ to help them buy those easily and hence overcome the trap created by physicians and larger companies. On the other hand, these companies have also been issued directives on curbing the prices as well as show a good cause for the high-priced drugs.
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Good Manufacturing Practices
Almost 50 Indian drug makers received warning letters for violation of good manufacturing practices in 2016[5]. These include violations of site hygiene, worker security, monitoring and evaluation, staff training, preventive and scheduled maintenance, periodic documentation, process standardization and so on.
For an industry that is as sensitive as pharma, attempts to regain the credibility are being made by enforcing good manufacturing practices also termed as GMP. Now it has been made mandatory for all units to have GMP certification. Periodic as well as surprise inspections are also being made to ensure that the same are constantly followed.
Beyond the Pill
Globally, Pharmaceuticals is moving beyond the bill to more engagement-driven delivery through interfaces such as mobile apps, microsites, online forums and peer review among patients. The same is being initiated in India.
With the growth of online pharmacies and the ‘Jan Aushadhi’ initiative by the government we are also making an attempt at creating a stronger community of customers through patient education, information, and interaction. Pharma is also joining hands with medical devices and genomics by creating a more patient-centric healthcare.
At IndiaBizForSale.com, we understand the difficulties faced by small pharma businesses in establishing credibility. We enable credibility-driven growth for SMEs by fuelling strategic partnerships in the domain in several forms.
[3] http://www.ibtimes.co.in/indian-pharma-companies-improved-credibility-2016-nomura-710080
[4] http://www.tapanray.in/is-credibility-erosion-of-pharma-accelerating/
Our Credibility – Our Strength
It has been a little over 4 years for us at IndiaBizForSale.com, and we already have 17,000+ users (businesses, individuals and professionals) registered on our platform as well as we recently started our first regional office in Mumbai. As we grew from strength to strength, there is one thing we always kept our focus on – Credibility.
Each user and each deal is special for us, and we serve everyone with equal zeal and fervour. Our technology team ensures a smooth and creative user experience in discovering potential matches, while our client support team is always available to address queries and doubts. We do not believe in letting things go in the middle, and so our users can also opt for end-to-end transaction support services where we manage the deal for them. We never spam you, and notify you on matches that are a fit for your requirements. We are much more than our algorithms – faster, quality matches that make sense for your business needs.
At the end of the day, credibility counts and we account for it more than ever, every single day, through our platform, interactions, and services. For example, in order to bring credibility to our business listings, we encourage our users to get their business listings verified, and on verification we highlight the same with VERIFIED tags. This brings confidence among users and separates the verified from the un-verified – just one of the many ways in which we bring credibility into play in our daily work. Another example – any information (other than platform listing) that a user shares with us is kept completely confidential with classified access within our team. We have reduced confusion over valuations by onboarding a valuation expert, who offers his services through our platform to interested users.
Our dream is to make IndiaBizForSale.com a brand to reckon with, one that is built brick by brick with your trust and faith. And we have already received enormous appreciation for our efforts – read our testimonials to know what our clients have to say about us!
Team Message (Divya)
Credibility for me, comes from becoming an expert in your field. Being with IndiaBizForSale for almost a year, I have realised that walking that extra mile every time for clients has helped me in getting more expertise in my niche profile and hence in creating a great rapport with my clients as well as increase my credibility.
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